Yeah, with everything going on in Pakistan/India/Afghanistan, it's easy to forget about the Middle East. I just read this shit though. Damn...

Avi Issacharoff wrote:

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All ofthem women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there. AdvertisementThe cries rain down, much like the hail of stones the masked men hurled at the Abu Sa'afan family in the house. A few seconds tick by before a group of journalists, long accustomed to witnessing these difficult moments, decide not to stand on the sidelines. They break into the home and save the lives of the people inside. The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the mosteffective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.

Ten minutes prior, while the security forces were preoccupied with dispersing the rioters near the House of Contention, black smoke billowed from the wadi separating Kiryat Arba and Hebron. For some reason, none of the senior officers of the police or the army were particularly disturbed by what was transpiring at the foot of Kiryat Arba. Anyone standing hundreds of meters away could notice the dozens of rioters climbing atop the roof of the Abu Sa'afan family home, hurling stones. Only moments later did it become apparent that there were people inside the home.

I quickly descend to the wadi and accost three soldiers. "What do you want from me? The three of us are responsible for the entire sector here," one said, his hand gesturing towards the entire wadi.

"Use your radio to request help," I said. He replies that he is not equipped with a radio.

A group of journalists approach the house. A dilemma. What to do? There are no security forces in the vicinity and now the Jewish troublemakers decided to put the journalists in their crosshairs. We call for the security guards from Kiryat Arba to intervene and put a halt to the lynch. But they surround the home to prevent the arrival of "Palestinian aid."

The home is destroyed and the fear is palpable on the faces of the children. One of the women, Jihad, is sprawled on the floor, half-unconscious. The son, who is gripping a large stick, prepares for the moment he will be forced to face the rioters. Tahana, one of the daughters, refuses to calm down. "Look at what they did to the house, look."

Tess, the photographer, bursts into tears as the events unfold around her. The tears do not stem from fear. It is shame, shame at the sight of these occurrences, the deeds of youths who call themselves Jews. Shame that we share the same religion. At 5:05 P.M., a little over an hour after the incident commenced, a unit belonging to the Yassam special police forces arrives to disperse the crowd of masked men. The family members refuse to calm down. Leaving the home, one can hear a settler yell at a police officer: "Nazis, shame on you." Indeed. Shame on you.

I dont think that the situation in the Middle East will ever be resolved. There's too much hate and it's been going on for too long, the next generations are brought up in the same fucked up scenerio. And any discussion started is promptly narrowed down to who was where first, like it solves anything. So Jews kill Palestinians and vice versa, and both parties call each other devils, and it is only true because in fact they all bring each other hell.

I'm actually interested if the US policy will change with President Obama in office. And by "change" I mean if instead of backing up Isreal anyone in the White House will actually be interested in settling the matter and trying to come up with a plan that will bring moderation to the region. Than again, Israel is the only ally in the region. And with what's going on in Pakistan and India America cannot weaken the position of Israel in the Middle East cuz the shit will jump off immiediatly so it would be a double headhache so to say.

Yeah, I don't know about how optimistic we should be about a deal ever being made. At the same time, a lot of these settlers are just crazies and it doesn't make much sense to placate them the way they've done for so long. And all they're accomplishing in doing so is provoking the Palestinians, as well as their Arab neighbors. So I don't see how these settlements are in Israel's interests in the first place. (And they're never justified in policy terms, only in historical/Biblical terms.) So I'd say that if we were really on the side of Israel, we would be condemning these settlers. I mean, every time they move to reign in the settlers, which is what provoked this incident, they get a first hand look at just how crazy they are.

And as far as Obama goes, one of the things that disappointed me about him early on was his pretty conventional pro-Israel stance. I mean I would have loved it if Rasheed Khalidi actually had as much sway over Obama as McCain tried to claim he did--pretty shamelessly I should say, since the only reason he invoked his name was because it's an Arabic one. But nah, I do like that Obama has Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Dude is someone whose ties to Israel allow him to be very critical and yet still seen as acting in good faith by the Israelis. Here's Jeffery Goldberg, of the Atlantic, on Emmanuel:

Jeffery Goldberg wrote:

Peace-processors take heart: Rahm, precisely because he's a lover of Israel, will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making, so when the next Prime Minister tells President Obama that as much as he'd love to, he can't dismantle the Neve Manyak settlement outpost, or whichever outpost needs dismantling, because of a) domestic politics; b) security concerns, or c) the Bible, Rahm will call out such nonsense, and it will be very hard for right-wing Israelis to come back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew. This is not to say that he's unaware of Palestinian dysfunction, or Iranian extremism, but that he has a good grasp of some of Israel's foibles as well. All in all, it's a very heartening choice.

Makes sense to me. Similar points have been made about having Hilary at state. They allow Obama to, say, pursue diplomatic relations with the Iranians or hammer out a new deal with the Israelis and the Palestinians and not be seen as some kind of radical, leftist, appeaser. (If that sounds dumb, that's because it is. The politics of our foreign policy are kind of stupid, if you didn't already know.)

Well in his recent interview he names Hamas and Hezbollah among the terrorist organizations. I think with what's going on in India and Pakistan, America's only choice is to continue the pro-Israel stance. America cannot let havoc disrupt in the middle east (like the last war in Lebanon), having not resolved the tensions in Asia first, and while Russia is back on some power trippin. That would be irresponsible. That's why it's only natural to back up Israel. And there's been so much shit going on in that region you really cant point fingers at who's to blame.

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